The Secret Mistress

She did not call after him.

Devil take it, she was in London. He was bound to run into her again, he supposed. Perhaps even this evening. Perhaps she would be at that infernal Tresham ball.

He frowned. This was not a day destined to bring him any pleasure. It had already started badly.

Chapter 4

ANGELINE’S PRESENTATION TO the queen had passed without incident. There had been no embarrassing encounters with the train of her gown, and she had met and chatted with other young ladies who were also making their come-out this year. She had high hopes of making friends of some of them.

She had never had a close friend, which seemed like an abject admission to make, even to herself, though she had never felt dreadfully deprived. Her two brothers had been her playmates—and her adored heroes—when she was a child. When she was a girl, she had known all her neighbors at Acton, including those of her own age, and had been on amiable terms with all of them. But of course they all stood slightly in awe of her because she was the daughter and later the sister of the Duke of Tresham, with the result that she had never had a bosom bow, someone with whom to chat and giggle and in whom to confide all the deepest, darkest secrets of her young heart.

Now, among her peers, perhaps she would find such young friends.

And beaux.

All the men in the vicinity of Acton, from the age of fifteen to eighty, were far too much in awe of her. Perhaps they all knew Tresham’s reputation too well and chose to safeguard their teeth rather than appear too friendly toward his sister.

Oh, she was glad, glad, glad that she was here in London at last, that she had made her curtsy to the queen, and that she was dressing for her come-out ball. She could hardly contain her exuberance.

She was already dressed, in fact, and Betty had just put the finishing touches to her very elaborate coiffure. She would not have thought it possible to arrange so many curls and ringlets on her head in such a pleasing arrangement. And she was confident that they would remain where they were. She shook her head gingerly and experimentally, but they did not cascade down about her shoulders. There was, of course, a whole arsenal of pins hidden away under them.

Angeline got to her feet and looked at herself critically in the pier glass. She looked, she supposed, as well as she possibly could look considering two massive and unavoidable facts: first that she was compelled to wear white, and second that she was a great dark beanpole of a girl. She had had the misfortune to take after her father rather than her mother in looks, as had both her brothers. But that fact was fine for them. They were men.

Nothing was going to dampen her spirits tonight, though.

Nothing.

She took the ivory fan Betty was holding out to her, opened it, and fluttered it before her face.

“Will I do?” she asked.

“You look ever so lovely, my lady,” Betty said. She was not being obsequious. She was just as likely to say the opposite if that was what she thought. Betty often did not approve of what her mistress chose to wear.

Angeline gazed into her own reflected eyes.

Who was he?

Her heart had performed a triple somersault when she had spotted him this morning as she went thundering past him up Rotten Row.

There he was.

At last.

Looking neat and lithe in the saddle, and just a little mud-spattered.

She had been about to call out to him. But, just as he had done at that inn, he had inclined his head to her, showing that at least he recognized her, and had ridden away without a word.

His behavior had been perfectly correct, of course. They still had not been formally presented. He had saved her from the horrible faux pas of calling out to a stranger in a very public place. Tresham would have had her head if he had ever heard about it. Even Ferdinand would have been annoyed, though by that time Ferdie was almost at the other end of the Row in a race with his friends. None of them were close enough to answer the question that had burned in her mind.

Who was he?

Angeline fanned her face a little faster before snapping the fan shut.

Would she see him again?

Would he be here tonight?

She turned from the pier glass as a brisk knock sounded at the door. Betty answered it. Tresham and Ferdinand were standing out there, both tall and gorgeous in their black evening clothes with crisp white linen.

Ferdinand was grinning.

“We argued over who should come up for you, Angie,” he said, “and we ended up both coming. You look as fine as fivepence.”

His eyes swept over her in what looked like genuine appreciation.

“Thank you, Ferdie,” she said. “So do you.”

He was twenty-one, one year down from Oxford, and well on his way to being as dedicated a rakehell as their brother—or so rumor had it, and Angeline did not doubt it. Neither did she doubt that he was wildly attractive to every female who set eyes upon him, and that he knew it.

Tresham looked his habitual bored, handsome self.

“Is this really our sister, Ferdinand,” he asked, probably rhetorically, “looking quite tame and civilized and, yes, very fine indeed?”

One might wait a decade in vain for a compliment from Tresham. One ought to cherish one when it did come one’s way, then. But Angeline bristled instead.

“Tame?” she said. “Civilized? Does that imply that I am usually wild and uncivilized? What do you know about me, Tresham? Before I came to town, I saw you on precisely two occasions after you were sixteen and I was eleven. And I would hardly misbehave during either Papa’s funeral or Mama’s, would I? You abandoned me when you left home so suddenly. All you knew about me afterward, presumably, was what you learned in the reports sent you by the various governesses you imposed upon me. And they all disapproved of me because I was not a perfect mouse of a young lady. What did they expect? What did you expect? I am a Dudley, after all. But I am not wild for all that. Or uncivilized.”

Tresham regarded her steadily from his very dark, unreadable eyes.